Finding oneself in someone else’s shoes: The role of perspective in literary texts

• Published in: Consciousness and cognition 2024-10, Vol.125, p.103767, Article 103767
• Main Authors: Tosi, Giorgia, Bonali, Noemi, Romano, Daniele
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Absorption; Adult; Bayes Theorem; Embodiment; Female; Humans; Male; Narration; Perspective; Self Concept; SWAS; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1053-8100; 1090-2376; 1090-2376
• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103767

•Embodiment and absorption in literary texts require finding oneself in someone else’s shoes.•Embodiment protocols and literary texts may be presented from various perspectives.•We found evidence that literary perspectives evoked similar absorption levels.•We indeed outlined a critical difference between embodiment and absorption. Embodiment refers to the possibility of processing external objects as part of one’s body. Similarly, absorption refers to the subjective experience of being absorbed in a narrative text and identifying with characters. Embodiment and absorption in literary texts have in common the idea of finding oneself in someone else’s shoes. Recent studies have shown that embodiment is influenced by the perspective used to induce the illusion. The present study aimed to assess whether absorption in literary texts was modulated by perspective too. We first confirmed the reliability of the absorption measure (Story World Absorption Scale − SWAS) in Italian. Then, we used a Bayesian approach to assess the impact of the story perspective on the perceived absorption. Our results showed that, unlike embodiment, the level of absorption is not influenced by the narrative’s perspective, suggesting that different processes underlie the two experiences of self-projection.